Photo & Video Galleries

Human Nature

Part 2 Project 2011Marie KojzarRoyal College of Art, UKIn 2021, the government’s privatization of nature has changed the English landscape and its value. The world ofluxury goods sees an opportunity to capitalize on the improved beauty of genetic engineering, and a growingdemand from eco-guilty consumers who have lost their faith in climate science. Responding to dichotomies in humanbehaviour, a flawed eco-industry sees a new dawn through genetically engineered nature that ensures an authenticconcern for environmental conservation through consumer attractions.Sited in Epping Forest, building and landscape are merged into a new genetically engineered ‘nature factory’ forluxury goods, masqueraded as a revamped ‘eco-industry’. Engineered eco-materials present an opportunity toexplore an unorthodox approach to green building, using the forest landscape as a pallet to engage with a newholistic architecture in which fashion meets nature, form meets harvest and perfection meets chaos.The proposal explores the relationship between temporary and permanent buildings. The main factory serves as the‘classic’ whilst the always changing shop fronts occupy new sites around the landscape to provide a changingfashion in material, texture as well as form, leaving traces around the landscape. An architecture that is based onstage sets satisfy a constant consumer demand for change.The British government’s 2010 plan to sell off public forests acts as a catalyst to the project, which investigates thepotential near future scenario of a privitization of nature and its consequenses. The evolution of the Englishlandscape will have to consider current trends such as an increase in ethical consumer culture and the momentumgained by scientific advances such as genetic engineering.The government stresses that the sell off is looking to energise our forests by bringing in fresh ideas and investment,and by putting conservation in the hands of local communities. On the contrary, the likelihood is that the clients willinstead be commercial enterprises, which means hidden motives and unanticipated consequenses that may notresonate well with orthodox conservation methods. The project aims to propose a scenario that investigates thecontrasting nature of an antidote and the fact that not everything in this world that is seen to do good comes withouta pay-off.Marie KojzarTutor(s) Rosy Head Nicola Koller

2011

1. In a future dominated by genetic engineering, how might the world of luxury goods exploit and placate eco-guilty consumers with an improved natural heritage?

2. LVMH is the first commercial enterprise to endorse the government’s new scheme to put a value on nature

3. A new British industry 2021: LVMH’s luxurious Epping Forest masterplan invests in engineered haute couture as well as mass market nature…

4. …maintained by a gridded network of underground laboratories and service structures that keep the choreographed landscape manicured

5. Engineered, sustainable eco-textures are designed, produced and patented at eco-factories scattered throughout the forest

6. StoneMoss – a new engineered eco-texture and a luxurious architectural material for the 2021 collection